Oh no. It’s ringing again.
Phone conversations have always been the source of high anxiety for me. I don’t even know exactly why. Maybe it has something to do with the unknown – unknown callers, unknown requests, unknown information getting through without me being ready with a tool-belt packed of how I want to handle it all. Unknowns always play a big part in people’s fears.
Normally, I would avoid every bit of phone interaction, but this is one thing I’ve been steadily working with on my to-do list that I feel I’ve made some progress on in the past year. Something about becoming a mother really pushed me into facing up to the parts of my life that had been lagging for far too long. Things like cooking real food, doing the dishes in a timely manner, and making and taking the calls that need to be made and taken. For the past year I’ve been increasingly making the effort to answer when people call me. Family, friends (yes, I wasn’t even comfortable answering calls from my closest), and even *DUN DUN DUN* the unknown callers.
So that’s why I manned-up (womanned-up?) and answered a call I just received from that all-too-terrifying unknown number. I’m so glad I did, too, because it was someone trying to reach me about saving up for my little one’s education and receiving government grants to do so. Something my husband and I have had dangling on our to-do list for far too long.
The kind gentleman on the other end of the call explained the three different grants available for us, told us a bit about the organization he works for, and made an appointment to come over to see us on Salt Spring next week to help us understand more about our options and get thinking about getting a fund for our future scholar started. Something that I feel is very important as I ended up taking out student loans for my years in university, and will be paying them slowly off for the next million years of my life.
Oh! And I was also informed that the Universal Child Tax Benefit will be going up to $160/month from the current $100/month, starting in January, and all children will continue to get the additional $60/month after they turn 6 years up until they’re 17. Pretty awesome, I think.
The moral of the story is to motivate yourself to do what needs to be done, even when you feel uncomfortable doing it. You never know what you can achieve… or who may be calling on you!